<p>Ladies … according to left-wing &#8220;woke&#8221; policies, you are no longer a viable participant in sports. Oh, you can play on teams, it is just that you will not be able to win gold medals – and maybe not even silver or bronze. You will be out of the running – figuratively and literally – for those college sports scholarships.</p>
<p>You will be losing out to biological men who have transgendered to womenhood in almost every sport. Yes … Billie Jean King beat a much older Bobby Riggs in a “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match back in 1973 &#8212; but that is an outlier. Transgender women have been increasingly dominating traditional women’s sport events.</p>
<ol>
<li>Swimmer Lia Thomas has already snatched several medals from women competitors – and in some cases, set records no woman is likely to match.</li>
<li>Anne Andres took home the prize in the Powerlifting Union 2023 Western Canadian Championship.</li>
<li>Vogue Magazine featured Cyclist Emily Bridges as the feature personality in the “sportswoman” category.</li>
<li>CeCé Telfer won the NCAA Division II national champion in the 400-meter run in 2019. She was also named the Northeast-10 Conference Women’s Track Athlete of the Year, and subsequently named to the All-America team.</li>
<li>Laurel Hubbard won two Oceania Championships and two Commonwealth Championships and several other gold medals. She won the silver medal at the 2017 World Championships.</li>
<li>Veronica Ivy is a two-time Masters world champion in track cycling. She won the 2018 UCI World Masters Track Cycling Championship and set a world record in the sprint event. She also won the 2019 Canadian Masters Track Cycling Championship.</li>
<li>Tiffany Abreu is a professional volleyball player in Brazil. She was a big part of the team that won the 2022 Brazilian Cup and was named the best opposite hitter of the tournament. She previously played for Italy and was the top scorer of the 2017-18 season.</li>
<li><strong>Caitlin Rooskrantz</strong>, a South African gymnast, competed at the 2020 Olympics.</li>
</ol>
<p>And the list goes on … and on … and on. And this is only the beginning of men undergoing gender change and taking over traditional women’s sports. There are numerous examples of how a transgender member of a women’s team is helping defeat all-women teams. That means the teams will be signing up more transgender players in order to compete. Women may still play on teams, but the transgenders will be breaking the records, taking home the trophies and very likely make the most money. You can count on that.</p>
<p>Some of the gender transitions raise suspicions. Men who were average in the sports pursuits, can greatly improve their status by switching to a women’s team. In some cases, men identifying as women are not going through the surgical or medical procedures. As of 2020, USA Gymnastics allows transgenders to participate without the surgery or hormone treatments. Males only identifying as females have created some discomfort and complaints by women players confronting male genitals in the locker room.</p>
<p>Competitive swimmer Riley Gaines has been a leading advocate to protect women’s sports. In addition to the competitive advantage that transgenders have, Gaines was motivated by her own experience in sharing a locker room and the public stage with Lia Thomas who still possesses male genitals.</p>
<p>While transgender women in women’s sports have become controversial in recent years, it is not a new issue. The obvious male advantage was an issue more than half a century ago, when Russia was putting transgender men on the Olympic weightlifting teams back in the 1960s. One of my municipal clients had a transgender civil engineer who played on a women’s softball team. She conceded her advantage, making her the power hitter on her team. That was more than 20 years ago.</p>
<p>As more of a libertarian conservative, I am accepting of a person’s individual decisions in terms of alternative lifestyles. Transgenders should be afforded their basic human and constitutional rights to employment, housing and public accommodations. However, there are limits to which they may impose their unique lifestyles on the general culture – and sports is one of those limits.</p>
<p>According to polls, two-thirds of the public opposed allowing Transgenders to play in sports opposite of their birth gender. The number who approve is decreasing. According to a June 2023 Axios poll, support has declined from 31 percent in 2021 to 23 percent among those who do not know a transgender person and from 40 percent to 30 percent among those who are acquainted to a transgender person.</p>
<p>The decline in support is largely due to a growing belief that it is simply unfair to women athletes to have to compete against a transgender. The advantage for the transgender is established in the science of biology and genetics – and evidence on the fields of competition.</p>
<p>Transgender athletes are a classic example of the claimed rights of a small demographic group trampling over rights of the much larger general culture. It should be a no-brainer. The determinant factor should be the DNA – not cosmetic surgery or medial intervention. Men and former men should not be pitted against women in most athletic competitions in which strength and stamina are critical factors.</p>
<p>The transgender population of the United States is somewhere between one-half to one percent. Even in a nation with strong minority rights and protections, that is a very small population to be upending the cultural traditions and rights of the vast majority.</p>
<p>Personally, I am at a loss to explain why women sport’s governing boards have acquiesced to demands so blatantly unfair to millions of your female athletes. There have been sound reasons to bar men from a range of women’s’ sports. That common sense should also apply to a person who is not fully a woman – and retains the beneficial physical traits of a man.</p>
<p>So, there ‘tis.</p>

Woke policies crushing women athletes
